


In Parallax

by zugzwaggin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 30ABY-ish, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Angst, Depression, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, First Time, M/M, PTSD John, References to Suicide, Secretive Sherlock, Spaceships!, force-sensitive!Sherlock, pilot!John, years before Episode VII
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:04:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9419939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zugzwaggin/pseuds/zugzwaggin
Summary: John lost his arm flying for the New Republic Starfleet, and is now attempting to make a living as a freelance spacer with a cybernetic replacement. Sherlock is jetting around the universe after God knows what, and finds himself temporarily in need of a trustworthy pilot.John just wanted a ship, and Sherlock just wanted a ride. Unfortunately, the universe has other plans.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to Google the names of alien races or planets or what-have-you. The races in particular should pop right up in an image search, so that you have a better idea of what's in play. All Star Wars mentions adhere as closely to Star Wars Canon as I can manage, with a little bit of Legends thrown in just because the Canon universe is still so small in comparison.
> 
> Major Star Wars characters might be mentioned by name, but will NOT be making any appearances.
> 
> I've posted chapter one against my own better judgement, unedited, because I'm in need of a good beta. So if anyone out there is familiar with both Star Wars and Sherlock and would be willing to help, I'd sure appreciate it!

**Chapter 1** **  
** **Retrograde**

 

 _“We sometimes think we want to disappear,_ _  
_ _when all we really want is to be found.”_

 ****  


It was one of the bloodiest, most violent bar fights John had ever had the misfortune to witness, and he’d been present in the Abregado-rae Spaceport that day the jilted Wookie had gone absolutely barmy and begun ripping apart the local Gados population limb from limb.

Ground zero this time was a dodgy basement cantina, squished haphazardly between a pair of dark, looming hangars and aptly named the Oil Slick. It catered chiefly to the slimy underbelly of Deysum III’s rapidly deteriorating capital city, near the base of the enormous shielded dome that protected its denizens from the waxy, noxious fumes of the overindustrialized planet’s broken surface. Only the dodgiest spacers set down brackets in the bottom of the city, where all the filth collected, and only the dodgiest cantinas catered to them. The Oil Slick was no exception.

John still wasn’t sure what had caused the quarrel initially, but given the harsh, impatient orders barked at the mop-up droids by the cantina’s maroon-skinned Rodian owner, he suspected it wasn’t the Oil Slick’s first. The alien spoke basic Standard in harsh, choppy bursts of sound that seemed to comply with what little John knew of the Rodese language, which had made it difficult to ascertain, at first, whether or not the male really was as close to losing his temper as he sounded.

“Don’t care,” he’d hissed at John in the immediate aftermath of the brawl, and with a jerky wave of his hand had indicated one of the larger booths near the back of his shadowed establishment. “But you stay, you pay for space you waste. Per hour. Fifty credit.”

“Of course,” Pash had answered for him, from down near John’s elbow. Pash was a Dug with mottled, pale blue skin and absolutely no scruples whatsoever, who was as renowned for his ruthless tact as much as for his somewhat befuddling ability to procure whatever random item one might happen to be in need of. During his time in Dragnoor, John had come under the disturbing impression that Pash owned this entire bloc of hangars, and by proxy everyone and everything within them. He had been stuck on this planet for less than a month, and already the very sight of the inverted little slimeball was enough to set his teeth on edge.

But Pash was also in possession of a flux converter that would fit well enough into John’s shoddy little E-Wing for a hyperspace jump or two, and he was desperate. The trouble was, Pash seemed to know it. He allowed John to practice backstreet medicine using the medical supplies the little alien had acquired from God knew where, for a nominally modest fee of only 80% of John’s profits.

“You don’t like it?” the alien had sneered initially, back when John had attempted to protest such an outrageous amount. He’d lifted his long, drooping snout and grinned. “Pay full price for your own flash-sterilizer. Or find work elsewhere.”

And there was the rub. John wasn’t _skilled_ in anything else, at least not anything he would consider performing for money. He’d been a pilot once, and a doctor before that. With his ship temporarily out of commission he was left with only one recourse, and without a valid medical license he was relegated to discrete patch jobs in the backs of hangars and cantinas, where the potential for profit was high as long as he secured the universally expensive supplies necessary to treat open wounds, injuries, and illnesses. Which left him with Pash.

At this rate he’d be stuck here another month before he earned the funds to repair his starfighter, and then he’d still need some means to procure the fuel and rations necessary for a jump to hyperspace, however brief, not to mention a means of providing for himself once he actually arrived in the next system. The last thing he wanted to do was set down on Randon only to start this entire process over again with another version of Pash.

John allowed himself a heavy sigh as he worked, his eyes drifting up from the patient sitting before him to flicker across the crowd gathered in the bar. He’d been at this for the better part of the afternoon now, and still at least half the patrons milling about the cantina were waiting here for their turn, guzzling down alcohol to dull the pain and pass the time. In all honesty, it was the Rodian who should be paying _him_ for his services here; John severely doubted such a shady dive bar got half this busy before nightfall without the services of a cheap, no-questions-asked doctor in a booth at the back.

“You could likely set up shop here permanently,” mused the deep, silky voice of the long-faced female Bothan beneath his hands. John glanced down from his work suturing the long length of her ear back to her scalp and saw that she’d followed his eyes up to the room before them. “I’m sure you’d earn yourself a small fortune.”

John made a face. She’d mistaken the source of the weariness in his gaze, but he didn’t bother to correct her. “That bad, is it?”

Though the Bothan’s leonine lips remained twisted with pain, she managed to aim a brief smirk in his direction. “You must be new to Dragnoor.”

“Landed here about four weeks ago,” John admitted. He was usually fairly cautious about what he said to strangers, having spent more than enough time in various smuggling dens and ramshackle spaceports throughout the galaxy to learn that particular lesson, but the Bothan woman didn’t come across to him as much of a threat, and during his travels as a spacer John had also learned to trust his instincts. He flashed her a wry, thin smile. “Been trying to escape ever since.”

“You and everyone else in this bubble,” the Bothan sighed. “No one comes to Deysum III on purpose these days.”

“Wish you’d told me that before I set down.”

“Wish someone had told _me_.”

She winced when John pulled the nanocarbon suture through the sensitive length of scapha of her ear, and he rubbed it with the softer, fleshy fingers of his right hand in apology. As far as patients went, she’d been one of his most well-behaved so far today, and for such a minor, easily reparable injury, one of his most gracious. Most of the more grievously wounded had either been hauled off to the medical bay proper, or had long since limped back to their ships to either nurse their wounds or succumb to them in private. Not all that many suffered from injuries both minor enough to be treated by a street doctor and serious enough to warrant the cost. Of those who did, fewer still were happy to have to pay it.

“I think you’re all set,” John told the Bothan after he’d spent several minutes checking to make sure the cartilage would take to repairing itself in his absence. He grabbed up a damp cloth and began blotting her deep brown fur and hair free of dried, flaky blood. “Give it about a week, then cut one end and pull it all out in one go. I promise it sounds worse than it’ll feel. The holes will close up on their own.”

“Thank you.” She stood and felt around the tender skin of her ear, wincing when her fingers found the raw edges.

“No, thank _you_.” John flashed her a grin as he disinfected his hands with a fresh antiseptic cloth, scrubbing at skin and metal alike all the way up to his elbows. “I’d tell you to come again, but I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. So cheers, yeah?”

The Bothan smiled at his humor and slipped a few extra coins into his palm when she went to shake it. “For the good work,” she explained at the look on his face, then leaned in and added, “And for having to deal with _him_. I think you’re going to need it.”

She stepped over a little janitorial droid scrubbing hard at a greasy-looking puddle on her way out the door. John gave himself a moment’s respite before dropping his soiled cloth into the bin and looking up at the looming figure of a waiting Herglic, more than nine feet of solid, smooth-skinned muscle and a scowl on his face that promised an unpleasant interaction. John sighed, then straightened his shoulders and offered the alien a smile.

“All right, big guy. Guess you’re up.”

After much prodding and scowling and cursing and threats, John determined that the Herglic suffered from nothing more serious than a few nasty, yellowing bruises and a dislocated shoulder, and quoted the hulking alien on a price. The Herglic narrowed a pair of beady black eyes in his direction, blowhole quivering as he seemed to determine whether or not to crush John’s head between the webbed fingers of one enormous hand.

“Two minutes,” John promised him, holding up the corresponding number of fingers. “Two hundred credits. Then you’ll be out the door, good as new. Scout’s honor.”

The Herglic, who suspected John of trying to swindle him, contemplated this for a moment. Only a moment ago he’d been so overwrought with pain that he’d been convinced he’d need an amputation. Now he seemed unable to justify why John would charge him so relatively little in comparison, if he was truly in no need of permanent disfigurement, and eventually nodded his great, bulbous head once, and lifted his good hand to mirror John’s.

“Two minutes,” he agreed, in a voice that sounded deep and smooth as river stones. “Two hundred credits. _If_ you can manage.”

His gaze slid down from John’s face to his comparatively miniscule human frame in a show of open skepticism. Sensing the opportunity to earn a bit more dough in this exchange, and eager to stretch his muscles after a long afternoon spent hunched over bleeding, battered bodies, John couldn’t keep a smirk from twisting at his lips.

“Two-fifty if I can manage it without help. One-fifty if I can’t.”

The Herglic’s thick grey lips twisted into an imitation of John’s own expression. Then they pursed, and he exhaled through the hole on the top of his head with a peculiar humming _hauum_ sound so deep that it vibrated through the floor all the way up the shins of John’s legs.

“Deal.”

It took a bit longer than two minutes to maneuver the Herglic into a manageable kneeling position on the floor, and to shoo away a few spectators curious enough to crowd them in. The dead weight of the Herglic’s arm alone was probably easily half that of John’s entire body, but he managed to fashion a wedge-shaped brace out of a pair of metal splints that propped up the alien’s elbow well enough, and then he took his place at the Herglic’s side and contemplated for a moment how best to manage this.

A glint of silver at eye-level distracted him for a moment. John glanced up and found his gaze locked with the watchful stare of what he assumed to be a human male, though the eyes were so slanted and their focus so sharp that he couldn’t be quite sure. John wasn’t sure what it was about the man that had grabbed his attention, but a deep ache in the bones of his left leg, as familiar as it was strange, made him suspect he’d been the object of the man’s icy attention for some time. By all accounts, if nothing else the strangely feathered, bird-like Fosh watching him from beside the man should have been the source of his distraction, but John had seen Fosh before. He hadn’t ever seen eyes quite like those.

A sudden puff of humid air lifted the hair from his forehead, and John looked down to see the kneeling Herglic watching him with an amused, if still somewhat pained, expression. “Give up already, little human?”

“And miss the chance to make a big brute like you scream like a little mynock?” John’s smirk returned, and he curled the fingers of his cybernetic left hand around the hard mass of the Herglic’s bicep. When he glanced up again, the Fosh remained but the man had gone. Strange, but ultimately unimportant. He forced his attention back to the task at hand. “Ready when you are.”

The Herglic slid his gaze from John to the floor and sucked in a deep breath through the hole on his head, then set his teeth and nodded again, just the once.

John braced one boot against the ground and the other against the broad flank of the alien’s torso, and _pulled_.

It felt a bit different, straining the mechanical musculature of a cybernetic arm in comparison to the blood and bone and fibers of his biological one, but John was no stranger to the sensation. He knew his limits, and even as he grit his teeth and clenched his good hand around his metal one and _heaved_ , and even as the flesh around the juncture of biology and machinery began to throb beneath his clavicle, he realized that this was very easily possible, and some of the tension left his shoulders. The Herglic’s arm was thick and heavy, but his own made use of hydraulics and pistons, and with just a bit more effort he felt the humeral head of the weighty limb suck itself back into place with a sickening _pop_ sound, at the same moment that the Herglic opened his mouth, bared a single row of flat teeth, and _keened_.

 

 **XXX** ****  


By the time potential patients had stopped approaching him for medical treatment, John was nearly two thousand credits richer and at least a dozen times more exhausted. The janitorial droids had finished their duties and the Oil Slick appeared as clean as John had ever seen it, and also as crowded. News of the brawl had spread through the bowels of Dragnoor, and now everyone with stakes in this sector was curious to see who hadn’t survived the row, and how the results of which panned out for them financially.

John scowled as he oversaw the credit transfer onto Pash’s chip set. Everything around here was about _finance_ , pure profit, and as he watched the lion’s share of his day’s earnings drain from his own account into Pash’s, he was not so self-absorbed that he failed to realized he’d fallen victim to the same perverse machinations of poverty. Nearly everyone here had been forced into their particular set of circumstances in a desperate effort just to get by, John knew--he’d become one of them, after all--but that didn’t lessen the bitter taste it brought to his tongue. It was all so dehumanizing, and yet necessary in the coldest, most basic sense. That basest dynamic of the weak being devoured by the strong, constantly at play in every corner of the universe, from animalistic wildlife on an uninhabited planet to the political web-weaving that was the heart and soul of the Inner Core.

“You could have charged that Herglic a thousand,” Pash scolded John with a scowl of his own, handing back his credit chip. “Earned yourself two hundred, easy. Instead you earn what, twenty? Sometimes, pilot doctor, I suspect you are keen to stay with me here on Deysum after all.”

John swiped his chip back and stuffed it into the inner pocket of his old flight jacket with a dark look. “For an amputation, maybe. He didn’t need one.”

“He insisted on one,” Pash reminded him, as if that was all that mattered. “What kind of doctor are you, to refuse a patient what he wants?”

“A _good_ one, I should hope.”

The Dug snorted so hard that the pair of gold-banded tentacles around his snout flared outward. “A _stupid_ one, you mean. And your stupidity has consequences that affect more than only your own stupid self. Six hundred credits you lost me today, at the very least.” He aimed narrowed emerald eyes up at John accusingly. “I should skim it from your profits. Instead, you pay the Oil Slick’s location fee.”

Indignant fury boiled to life in John’s belly, and for a moment it was all he could manage not to _throttle_ the draconic little sleazeball. Instead he clenched his left fist so hard his fingers scraped against the metal of his palm, and the digital warning bells in the back of his mind helped to cut through some of the frustration that threatened to overtake his better judgement.

“I am not your _employee_ ,” he hissed furiously. “You can’t _garnish my wages_ \--I’m not earning from you!”

“You are not earning _for_ me, either.” Though the Dug was a good several feet shorter than John, he somehow still managed to peer down his long nose at him. “Not enough.”

“Hey, you know what?” This was the last straw. John lifted his hands in a mock gesture of surrender, his tone icily sardonic. “How about this? _No_. You want to make a profit out of hacking off limbs, you can damn well do it yourself. I’m done.”

Undeterred by this little display of defiance, Pash grabbed the lapel of John’s jacket before he could turn to go and dragged the human down closer to his own level. “Do not test me, _stupid_ doctor, or I will begin by hacking a second one off of _you_.”

John should have backed off. He should have demanded back the credits he’d already payed Pash for the flux converter--he shouldn’t have agreed to pay the vile little Dug in installments to begin with, but Pash but made it conditional for use of his medical supplies, and John hadn’t anything else left to barter at the time. He should have walked away, either way, and let Pash win this round, which ultimately meant nothing in the grand scheme of things that were a great deal more important than John’s stinging, already battered sense of pride.

But he was tired. Physically he was exhausted, but mentally, emotionally, he felt stretched and strained so thin lately that a good hard poke would likely tear right through and rip him apart. He’d dealt with greedy little arsewipes like Pash in the past, but he’d never allowed himself to be pushed around by one before, and financially desperate or not, John was sick to death of it.

He _should_ have backed off, and returned to confront the Dug about his underhanded and frankly extortionist methods when he was in a better, calmer, more rested frame of mind. Instead John wrenched back his cybernetic hand and slugged the ugly little alien, and for once took great pleasure in crushing bone rather than repairing it.

 

 **XXX** ****  


In retrospect, of course, picking a fight with a crime lord in the middle of one of said lord’s own establishments had been a pretty fucking pants idea.

John pressed a frosty cold glass of beer against his throbbing temple and sighed at the momentary ease of pressure from somewhere behind his swollen eyeball. He wasn’t in bad shape, really. Considering. He should probably be dead, except that despite Pash’s greed he suspected the little Dug recognized a profitable ‘employee’ when he saw one, and that Pash was intelligent enough not to let the satisfaction of momentary vengeance cut into the potential of his own future proceeds.

That idea rankled John more than the thought of lying dead on the floor of the Oil Slick. It had been so easy, hadn’t it? Just one single stroke of bad luck, a blown fuse in an irreplaceable piece of a ship he didn’t even very much like, and here he was sitting in the back of a cantina peeking down at the bottom of his fifth pint of ryll, indebted almost ten thousand credits to a wretched little snake who would likely double the price of his flux converter out of spite, if he didn’t simply tack on an interest rate so high that John would never be able to keep up with it.

He could scrap the entire endeavor and just go, of course. Cut his losses, steep as they were. Except he was stuck at the bottom of a domed city on a planet with an atmosphere so toxic it’d killed off its own wildlife centuries ago, with no money and nothing to his name but a useless hunk of scrap metal in the shape of a starfighter. He would have to sell the E-Wing--inevitable at this point, really, but it wouldn’t go for much without a flux converter, and using the money to charter passage to another system would doubtlessly just dump him into the dregs of another planet in much the same predicament. If he was being completely honest with himself, he’d been skirting the rim of this barrel for a couple of years now, just one serious malfunction away from tumbling those last few feet to rock bottom. Ever since he’d been officially invalided, actually. He just...he hadn’t thought they’d actually go through with it, not after all the years he’d given them.

He hadn’t thought a lot of things, back then. He really hadn’t thought much at all. He’d been very naive.

The solid thunk of heavy glass against thick metal drew his eyes up just in time to see the paradoxically sympathetic face of an expressionless server droid as it withdrew its double-jointed fingers from a fresh pint of ryll and stepped away. Although he knew it was a pointless gesture, John offered the droid a small, lopsided smile before pulling his current glass away from his temple and drawing deeply from its contents. He ended up chugging the last quarter or so in about the same amount of time that it took his temple to resume its painful throb, and he willed the alcohol to thin the pounding blood in his head as he reached for the new one.

A pale, slender hand descended onto the rim of the glass from out of nowhere, stopping him. “I’d not start another one just yet, if I were you.”

The voice was soft but deep, and came from somewhere over John’s left shoulder. Frowning, he looked up to find the same peculiar pair of silvery blue eyes that had been watching him earlier that afternoon, and the sight was so unexpected that he sat back in his booth with his head cocked and blinked, momentarily distracted from the tangled mass of pain that was his ribcage.

“You. I know you.”

The stranger used his grip on the pint to slide it across the table out of John’s reach, as he slipped into the booth opposite with a sort of fluid grace usually reserved for the avian Omwati or the feline Farghul--definitely not for clumsy, awkward humans, of which race John’s pounding head was beginning to make him feel particularly well-suited.

The man leaned his elbows on the table and raised a single dark eyebrow, his eyes on John. “I very much doubt that.”

“You were in the cantina.” John’s words weren’t slurred, but his head swam when he leaned forward to reclaim his beer. The man brought the side of his palm down between John’s hand and the mug as if to keep him from it, but John only batted it away before dragging the pint back his way and lifting its cool, soothing glass to the raw patch of skin above the corner of his eye once more. Amber ryll and egg-white foam sloshed onto the table from over the canted rim, but John couldn’t bring himself to care overmuch, and kept his gaze focused on the stranger.

The man laced his fingers together into an inverted steeple beneath his chin. “I visited a few cantinas today. I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”

John fought off the urge to roll his eyes, but only because he didn’t want to hurt himself in the attempt. “You know the one I’m talking about. You were watching me. Why?”

The man seemed to consider this a moment before answering. “You were interesting.”

Before he could stop himself, John barked out a laugh. He regretted it immediately; pressure flared up behind his eyes, from deep within his lungs, and fresh liquid warmth coated his fingers. Pulling the pint away, John noticed they were smeared with blood, bright red mixed with the crusty darker bits of a burst scab.

Despite this, the wry grin refused to leave his face as he disentangled the shemagh from around his neck and wadded it up to press against his head wound with an amused glance up at the man across the table. “Is that right? Me.” He could hardly imagine the sorry sight he must have made, all scuffed up and bruised and exhausted and half-drunk, a few days unshaven, with an eye threatening to swell closed and only one good arm to boot. “You sure it wasn’t the Herglic you were interested in? He was a pretty nice fellow, actually. Well-mannered. And I always assumed they had gruff voices, you know, given their size and all, but his sounded more like whalesong...”

He was rambling. He was properly drunk now, no denying it. The alcohol bloomed warm in his belly, as soothing as it was disorienting. It didn’t do much to quell the aches of his freshly battered body, but it helped distract him from the miserable fact that they were there, at least.

“You don’t drink like this often,” mused the man suddenly, after a moment of silence. “Of course. Obvious.”

“Is it?” John raised his eyebrows in mock inquiry over the rim of his blood-smeared glass as he nursed from it. “Find that _interesting_ , do you?”

“Not particularly. I find your military career interesting, and your exceptional skills as a physician. Why did you leave the New Republic Starfleet?”

John found himself choking down a thick gulp of ryll, his bitter amusement wiped out by a surge of surprise and confusion. Was this man an agent of some kind? But why would an agent track down _him_ , and all the way to _Deysum_ , of all planets?

“Who--?”

The stranger waved away his question impatiently. “You left voluntarily, but you didn’t want to. That’s the only part I can’t work out. Tell me why.”

Frowning now, John set down his pint with a heavy thunk. “I was invalided,” he said simply. Alarm had chased away the thickest of his inebriation, and he scrunched his face up as he considered the man across from him with growing suspicion.

“Nonsense. The New Republic doesn’t invalid officer pilots for losing limbs--cybernetic replacements are far superior in nearly every way. Tell me the real reason.”

“I was _invalided_ ,” John insisted. His left hand fisted tightly in his shemagh. “Look it up if you want. You seem the sort.” He let his eyes rake up and down the man’s narrow frame, the delicate cheekbones, the obviously tailored gaberwool coat with its long collar turned up dramatically around his neck. Core born and raised, he had to be. John would have pegged him for the type even if he’d never opened his mouth and revealed that richly curled accent.

“Mmm,” the man hummed, looking dissatisfied. John tilted his head, eyes narrowing with uneasy distrust.

“How did you know?”

“Mmm?”

“About the military.”

“Mmm. Obvious.”

Arrogant sod. John pursed his lips and fought to keep his temper from flaring. “Not to me.”

Unfurling himself from over his steepled hands, the man’s eyes took on a decidedly smug slant as he straightened his spine and settled back into his booth with a haughty look. “It’s your arm, of course. Or lack thereof.”

John glanced down at his left arm, but after a moment’s drunken contemplation decided no, that didn’t actually explain anything at all, and lifted his gaze to the stranger’s again with a canted frown. “Sorry, what? I could have lost this anywhere. I could have had it ripped off by a rampaging Wookie, for all you know.” And very nearly had, once. “Hell, my entire lower half could be cybernetic, as far as you can see.”

“Doubtful,” the man drawled. “Your gait would have shifted. No, you’re missing only the arm, and present circumstances aside, you’re clearly diplomatically-minded enough not to instigate a fight you couldn’t win, cautious and intelligent enough to mostly avoid the latter, and capable enough to hold your own regardless.”

“That’s optimistic of you,” John intoned dully, discomforted by such a lopsided assessment, but the man plowed on as if John hadn’t said anything at all.

“You’d obviously lost it in combat of some kind, so the question I had to ask myself was simple. Why would a physician be in combat?” He paused to press pale palms together thoughtfully, silver eyes narrow on John’s. “Because you were certainly a physician first, you didn’t learn to operate with a cybernetic hand--you’d have had it fitted for medical tools if that were the case, and likely made quite a fortune for yourself throughout the remainder of your career. Instead you’re practicing out of cantinas and open hangar bays in the pits of Dragnoor, likely deterred from seeking a more valid position in the medical ward because of a lack of proper licensing and credentials, _likely_ having lapsed since your dominant hand was replaced by a metal and silicon one, still quite dextrous and even tactile, but certainly not quite the same, surgically speaking. So it stands to reason you were a doctor first and a pilot second, and lost your arm in the interim of the latter. And why _would_ a physician participate in combat?”

Though he’d been mostly quiet before, he seemed to be on some kind of roll now, and didn’t give John a chance to answer. He leaned forward over the table, closer, the peculiar sheen of his eyes locked with John’s, which were wide and startled, unsure how to process this flood of astonishingly accurate personal information.

“To _help_ , of course. Altruism at its finest. You joined something you thought to be greater than yourself, you joined a _cause_ , something good that you believed in.” He nodded at John’s cybernetic arm, still tightly clutching his shemagh on the table. “A wound like that, a disposition like yours, I’m willing to make the leap to military, _proper_ military, not some ramshackle militia on a backwater planet fighting for independence or some other rot. You flew for the New Republic. You have all the bearings of an officer, you were with them for _years_ , at least a decade, casual recruits don’t learn to carry themselves like you do. Which only begs the question…” Pausing again, he steepled the pads of his fingers together and leaned back once more into his booth, his sharp gaze locked, riveted, to John’s, as if by watching closely enough he could pull the answer right out from John’s forehead. “Why did you leave?”

For a moment, it was all John could do to stare back blankly. He felt...gutted. Not disemboweled, but vivisected, scientifically peeled apart at the seams and examined piece by piece. It should feel like a violation, being splayed open so vulnerably like that, the last twenty years of his life shuffled about and flourished in front of him as effortlessly as a deck of cards, but for some reason he couldn’t muster the indignity. Perhaps Pash had drained him of what little remained of his self-respect earlier that evening, or perhaps it was because of the way this man was looking at him, eyes bright with curiosity rather than...what, judgement? John wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he searched them, but it wasn’t the frank, open interest that he found.

The marrow deep in the femur of his left thigh had begun to ache again. John squeezed it with the hydraulics of his cybernetic hand, suddenly nervous. “You’re not...some sort of telepath, are you?”

The man finally broke John’s gaze, averting his eyes with a derisive snort. “Don’t insult me. Telepathy would be _cheating_.”

Given the amount and accuracy of the information the man had just divulged, John remained unconvinced. “But you’re not…”

“ _No_. And I wouldn’t even if I could. Like I said, it would be cheating. My methods are purely scientific.”

John doubted, somehow, that this man would resist peering directly into the folds of his brain if the opportunity somehow presented itself. But it came as somewhat of a relief to learn that he really hadn’t drawn out all of that information from inside his mind somehow, and also, as the only alternative occurred to him, as a shock.

“So...hang on. You worked out all of that on your own? From just…”

Perhaps it was the alcohol slowing things down, but John glanced down at the metal arm where it rested on his throbbing thigh and tried to imagine gleaning anything more pertinent from it than a vague sense of sympathetic sorrow for its operator. Across the table, the man looked smug again.

“From just your arm, yes.”

“That’s...incredible.”

The man’s smirk widened. “I know. Well. Fundamental, really, but I appreciate that you’re unable to tell the difference.”

“No really, that’s…” John’s head was swimming again, something in the pit of his skull pounding in time with the heartbeat in his throbbing temple. “That’s _amazing_. From just...just from looking at me. Fantastic. Little frightening, I’ll admit, but.” He found himself chuckling, though from genuine amusement or a minor dip into exhaustion-wrought hysteria he couldn’t tell. “I guess there are scarier things out there than non-telepathic telepaths, yeah?”

The man’s gaze shifted almost imperceptibly as he watched John, the slant of his eyes losing some of their harsher edges. “Yes,” he confirmed again, and angled his head down just slightly enough that the color in his eyes darkened to something that most closely resembled a steely blue.

“You look surprised,” John pointed out, surprised himself. “I feel like, between the two of us, I should have dibs on that one.” He fluttered a hand back and forth between them, eyes alight with open interest. These last few weeks in Dragnoor had been nothing but an extended enterprise into frustration and defeat, and against the backdrop of a city so greasy and stale that John had almost allowed himself to forget that anything bright and colorful existed anywhere beyond it. This man was neither bright nor colorful, at least in the most literal sense of the words, but he was _different_ , and he was certainly something curious, and maybe that was all the reminder John had needed that the universe had a bit more on offer than the likes of Pash and his goons.

Blinking back the pulsing haze in his mind, he found himself wishing for the first time that evening that he hadn’t had anything to drink. “You’ve just told me my entire life story, and I...God, I’m drunk, and I don’t even know your name.”

“Sherlock.” The name seemed to unfurl from within the man’s dramatically curved mouth like thick, viscous liquid. He was still watching John with that peculiar expression on his face, head bowed and heavy-lidded, eyes just a thin flash of blue silver beneath them. John found himself grinning before he could help it.

“Sherlock,” he repeated dryly, amused. “And you called _me_ interesting. I’m just John.”

“Just John,” Sherlock echoed in turn, and John detected the hint of an amused smile of his own threatening to curl up one corner of his mouth. “The uninteresting military doctor with a cybernetic arm and the beginnings of a spectacularly black eye.”

“That’s me, yeah” John agreed with a fresh, somewhat crooked grin. “Just an ordinary bloke. Maybe a might scruffy ‘round the edges.”

Sherlock flashed him a grin of his own, but it disappeared from his face as quickly as it’d arrived. He flattened his hands on the table carefully, taking his time to keep them out of any wandering tendrils of John’s spilled beer. The thick, dark woven fabric of his gaberwool coat contrasted harshly with the smooth expanse of pale skin at his wrists. “Well, John. I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve approached you.”

“The question did cross my mind, yeah.” John nursed from his pint again, not so much for the alcohol as just for something to wet his mouth and tongue, gone suddenly dry. There was something extraordinary about this man and the conversation they were having, something dangerously substantial, and it occurred to him that if Sherlock got up and left now, without explaining himself, John would wonder for the rest of his life what kind of incredible opportunity had just sailed above his head. His leg throbbed. He ignored it.

“I understand you are a pilot, in need of a functional ship.” Sherlock looked up from his hands to John’s face, his words slow and carefully enunciated. “I am in possession of a ship. I need a competent pilot.”

John wanted to ask how Sherlock could possibly know about his starship, but given the admittedly impressive soliloquy he’d just been treated to, thought better of it. For now. Instead his eyes lit up at the proposition, at this unexpectedly abrupt opportunity to get out from beneath Pash’s heel. He gulped down another swig of beer in an effort to hide the excitement on his face, aware that any sign of eagerness could only work to sway whatever deal was being proposed into Sherlock’s favor.

“The journey would need to be...discreet,” Sherlock continued, his own expression almost preternaturally neutral. At this, however, John shifted in his seat and frowned.

“Are you smuggling something?”

“Not as such, no. But there are certain...entities who would be, shall we say, _desperately_ curious to know where I’m going, and why. They--”

John held up a hand to stop him. “Doesn’t matter. Where are you going?”

At this, finally, Sherlock seemed to hesitate, though only briefly. He met John’s eyes carefully. “Concordia.”

John’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. Sherlock’s expression didn’t change. He continued to watch John with rather unconvincing patience.

“Concordia,” John repeated, tilting his head as he considered this. “That’s in Mandalorian space.” The Mandalorian System had been in complete disarray since the Clone Wars had ended decades ago, and now served as nothing more than a series of smuggling dens, drug and slaver trafficking ports, and dangerous beskar mines. Bounty hunters and mercenaries gathered there looking for work. Sherlock did not appear to belong to either of those groups.

“Concordia is Mandalore’s moon, yes,” Sherlock confirmed evenly. “Dangerous space, I’m aware. Your payment would be the ship itself.”

“I...What?”

“It’s a Corellian model,” Sherlock went on. “One of the YT-series, I believe. Quite well cared-for, I can assure you, though by no means new. I’ve no use for it nor interest in it, beyond as a very necessary but temporary means of transport. Get me to Concordia without attracting any undue attention, and it’s yours.”

John stared. His heart had begun to pound in his chest, aggravating his wounds and flushing his cheeks with heat. A Corellian ship was...well, it was worth far more than John had hoped to make in the next several years of his life, and certainly more than a simple jump to Concordia should cost, no matter how hostile the arrival.

He could find proper work with a ship like that, not just as an escort and a dogfighter but as a courier, a transporter, as a proper freight ship or even private charter. He could make a _living_ with a ship like that, and not just as some down and own spacer hopping from rock to rock in search of freelance work. He could find a place, rent a bay, save something up, maybe even settle down one day...

Swallowing thickly, John flicked his tongue out to wet suddenly dry lips and tried not to look, tried not to _feel_ , as monstrously, greedily optimistic as he did. Under the table his leg threatened to bounce on the ball of his foot with renewed energy, and in an effort to hide it he leaned forward and clutched his half-empty pint with both hands, eyes on Sherlock.

“What’s the catch?” It was more a statement than a question.

Sherlock blinked slowly, his eyes and mouth glowing with the hint of an otherwise invisible smile. “No catch. No strings, either. Simply get me from here to Concordia’s surface safely, and the ship is yours.”

Dubious, John took a moment to consider the offer. It sounded insane, way too good to be true, and that meant it probably was. He tried to imagine all the ways he could be deceived, up to and including his own death or enslavement in the spice caverns or even the beskar mines themselves, given their proximity, but...all of that seemed a little far fetched, given the circumstances. He certainly had nothing of value that could be taken from his corpse save, perhaps, his cybernetic arm, but there were ways to go about separating him from it that did not involve going through all the trouble of hosting some roundabout conversation in the back of a cantina. The same went for slavers; if they wanted him in chains, they certainly wouldn’t have bothered talking to him about it first.

Gripping the table’s edge, John sat back with a long sigh and tried to process the possibility that all of this was somehow...real. Legitimate. The thought was dangerous. He wanted so badly to grasp at the very first opportunity he could to get out from under Pash’s control that he was wary he might be overlooking some very real dangers in his haste.

But then, what could be more dangerous than staying here in Dragnoor working for someone like Pash? The Dug wasn’t going to let him leave willingly, now that he had John all tangled up within his web--that’s how these sorts of situations always played out, one way or another. John might be an idiot in some regards, but he was definitely not stupid. He recognized the danger that working for a loan shark like Pash posed, and he was aware that once indebted, it was all but impossible to escape. So far, he only owed Pash half the cost of a flux converter he hadn’t even been permitted to claim yet, so technically Pash owed him all of the credits John had paid down in advance. He knew better than to try to get those credits back. If he was smart, he would take this strange man up on his offer while he had the chance, and before Pash created the opportunity to tangle him up into some kind of proper debt, a bounty maybe, or unpaid interest, or whatever other rubbish scheme a wretched alien like Pash would come up with.

And if Sherlock was lying, and there really was more to this little journey than he let on? Well, John would rather deal with that, with a danger he could face and he could _fight_ , than with the intangible, inescapable looming dread of trying to work his way out from beneath Pash’s greedy thumb.

“You’re taking an awfully long time to decide,” Sherlock said abruptly, scattering his thoughts. John flashed him a look that turned into a grimace when he leaned forward again to gulp from his glass, his ribs aching in protest.

“Trying to figure out if whatever you’re not telling me could possibly be any worse than the shit I’m dealing with here.”

Rather than argue, Sherlock simply continued to look at him expectantly. “And?”

It was this frank concession, more than anything, that helped settle the swaying feeling of unease in John’s stomach. He hadn’t expected Sherlock to admit that there was more to this little excursion than he was letting on. Perhaps it shouldn’t have pleased John so much, but in refusing to deny the accusation it felt as if Sherlock was affirming that he was capable enough to make his own decisions on even ground, rather than attempting to sway him into employment with false platitudes and promises of obviously nonexistent security. Because there was no such thing as security in space--John had learned that the hard way, more than once.

So at least it seemed they were on the same page about that.

John raised his hand to signal for the server droid. “Let me get some water in me, and we can start ironing out some of the details. I hope you’re ready to leave about as soon as possible, because I bloody well am.”

Sherlock’s response to this was a wide, roguish grin. It took about ten years off his age, and it was the first not to disappear as quickly as it’d arrived.


End file.
